E-mail updates
Follow on Twitter
Subscribe to RSSUpdated at 9:38 AM ET Congress passed the bailout – TARP or Troubled Asset Relief Program -- amid the October 2008 financial crisis with the support of then-Sen. Barack Obama and GOP presidential candidate Sen. John McCain.
TARP special inspector general, Christy Romero, an Obama appointee, said Wednesday in her quarterly report that taxpayers still own 61 percent of the common stock of TARP’s biggest investment, the insurance giant, American International Group, and that AIG still owes the Treasury $36 billion from the rescue.
NBC's Lisa Myers reports on a new book by Neil Barofsky, the watchdog who oversaw the controversial $700 billion bank bailout known as TARP. He claims TARP was much more about taking care of Wall Street, than helping Main Street.
AIG’s involvement in financial vehicles called credit default swaps (CDS) went spectacularly bad in 20008, and the firm was careening toward collapse but was saved by a $182 billion rescue engineered by the Federal Reserve and by Congress through TARP.
The company’s stock -- worth over $1,400 per share in 20007 -- plummeted to less than $9 per share in 2009. It is now worth about $30 per share.
Now four years after the bailout, “AIG continues to maintain a portfolio of CDS and continues to engage in securities lending, albeit much smaller than prior to TARP,” Romero said in her report.
In an interview, Romero explained that the focus of her concern is a subsidiary called AIG Financial Products Corporation (AIGFP). “The size of AIGFP’s trading book is greatly diminished, but it may come as a surprise to some that any of AIGFP still exists at all,” her report said.
Recommended: Cost of health care overhaul down, but uninsured up due to Supreme Court ruling
Romero’s report Wednesday said, “There is currently no Federal banking regulator with responsibility for overseeing AIG’s noninsurance financial businesses.” Referring to AIGFP, she said, “The concern comes with lack of regulation of that entity. This was an entity whose risky actions nearly brought down AIG and because of the size and interconnectedness of AIG, regulators determined at the time that AIG was too big to fail.”
The 2010 Dodd-Frank law set up a process for the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC), headed by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, to designate AIG and other non-bank financial firms to as “Systemically Important Financial Institutions” (SIFI) and thus to be regulated by the Federal Reserve, but that has yet to happen.
“It’s not even clear what the time frame for them to do that is; it’s not even clear whether they’re going to do that,” Romero said. “Right now, there’s been no signal from federal regulators that they are going to designate AIG as a SIFI under Dodd Frank.”
Until that happens, she said, “there’s a big unknown as to whether there’s going to be any kind of federal regulator with oversight over all of AIG’s financial business.”
Geithner will testify Wednesday before the House Financial Services Committee and Thursday before the Senate Banking Committee on FSOC’s work and other issues.
“Congress can certainly urge – and some members of Congress have urged – FSOC to move on these designations. Even if they don’t move on all designations, decide on AIG,” Romero said.
AIG has paid back most of the $182 billion, partly through asset sales.
The Treasury has gradually sold off some of its holdings in AIG stock. And FSOC said in its annual report last week that the Treasury’s stake in AIG and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s investment in AIG “are likely to produce an additional profit for the U.S. public.”
“AIG has taken significant action since the crisis -- working with Treasury and the Federal Reserve -- to restructure, reduce risk, and streamline its operations to focus on its core insurance business,” Treasury spokesperson Matt Anderson said Wednesday.
But Romero asked, “Where is the exit strategy for AIG to get out of TARP? I haven’t seen a clear exit strategy.”
She added, “The purpose of TARP is financial stability -- so whatever strategy Treasury comes up with in terms of exiting this investment in AIG has got to be done in a way that assures financial stability.”
With the trauma of 2008 having faded, it’s not clear whether voters still care about TARP -- or are even aware of its continued existence. But TARP did play a significant role in several 2010 races, helping defeat members who voted for it.
Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, Utah Sen. Robert Bennett, and South Carolina Reps. Bob Inglis and Gresham Barrett lost 2010 GOP primary contests partly due to their votes for TARP.
And in Pennsylvania Democratic Senate candidate Joe Sestak – facing Republican Pat Toomey who ran anti-TARP ads -- felt compelled to run an ad telling voters it “made me sick” to vote for the bailout and comparing his vote to cleaning up his dog’s excrement. Sestak lost.
This year it may be a sleeper issue in at least one Senate contest.
Nevada Sun political columnist Jon Ralston wrote two weeks ago that Republican Sen. Dean Heller, in a competitive race with Democrat Rep. Shelley Berkley, hasn’t yet used against her “what his team considers a potential silver bullet issue — Berkley’s vote for TARP, which for him polls off the charts….”
Ralston added in an e-mail Tuesday, “The Heller folks have long had polling data that TARP -- bailing out the evil banks -- is a potent issue. Heller voted against it (when he served in the House in 2008), so they think it is a contrast.”
Leave a Comment:
Come on guys. Really?
Who knows, maybe it will be worth over $1,400 per share in 20007...
TARP did prevent the worst from happening - the recession could have been worse without TARP.
And TARP has turned a profit overall. But it's unnecessary big in scope because those members of congress who had initially voted against it changed their vote only when more pork was offered to their districts.
Its about time the USA declares bankruptcy and abolishes the Federal Reserve Note for a gold/silver backed currency or both. We need to break up these large monopolized corporations and allow the barrier of entries to be more reasonable for smaller businesses. We need to make things right again, live within our means and stop going to other countries with soldiers to harass. Our military is tired of being stretched thin when we have the Mexican Cartel at our border with a lot more muscle than our police force.
IF TARP NEVER HAPPENED then our economy after tanking would actually be improving right now!
I haven't forgotten about TARP and still seethe at the whole bailout strategy. If the people had been bailed out, then banks & corporations, the financial entitities that caused this mess in the first place, would have gotten their money and people might have survived financial and job loss.
But the banks & govt collude--the people working in Govt are from Wall St. It's really unforgivable, the whole thing. Workers get a measly $20 payroll tax cut; banks get trillions in nearly interest free loans that they'll turn around and charge you 20 & 30% for.
Nobody's forgotten anything because most people are still suffering the effects Criminal Banking Activity that goes on to this day.
AIG performed a critical function. It was a conduit to funnel billions of taxpayer dollars to cover the banksters gambling debts. Just because they destroyed the economy and caused a tremendous amount of suffering that continues to this day you couldn't have the banksters be forced to take any responsibility for their actions. It allowed the politicians to claim that TARP turned a profit.
OK now lets have endless posts about the Fannie and Freddie commando squads that held guns to the banksters heads and forced them to make the loans that they profited handsomely off of.
And the TOTAL owed to the taxpayers for all the BAILOUTS is $ 132,900,000,000:
Expect a LOSS on the bailouts.
What ticks me off is some of these TURKEYS are using bailout money to REPAY the BAILOUT $$$ they received.
Yes, the government (We the People) still own about 28% of Government Motors STOCK.
Just to be clear people TARP was passed by Bush and ARRA was passed by Obama. Hope you guys understand the difference.
I can already see people on here Obama passed TARP!!!!!!!
Without tarp where would we be? Keep in mind that insider trader 2.0 W. Bush changed bankruptcy laws just before the economic sh1t hit the fan! Don't tell me their rich buddies didn't instigate the change so they could make out on it!
http://economywatch.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/07/24/12861488-how-a-140-bill-snowballed-into-foreclosure?
Banks are still manipulating laws through loophole policies! This is why Republicans want less government. So their banker/Wall Street buddies can continue to rape and pillage consumers.
Do ya'll actually want to trust any bank whatsoever without tarp in place? I wouldn't trust one goddamned Republican issue point or bill without a safety net or we're going splat!
Again! If it wasn't for those damned Bush and Cheney Republican economic policies we would not have needed tarp!
Screw that. It is the guy who hands out money that is properly held accountable.
TARP was a theft committed by the government to pave over the losses of their fellow criminals in the corporate world to maintain the status quo.
Status quo: The rich stay rich and get richer while the poor stay poor, and if they live, get poorer.
TARP may have been signed by Bush, but he decided to let Obama decide how to spend the money.
Mr. Obama has increased our National Debt MORE THAN ANY OTHER PRESIDENT in history.
Hope you guys understand that.
You might wanna check some facts and figures first about who increased what. Go back through history you will find that the republican presidents ALL increased the deficit by record amounts. Not saying the current is better....just not worse....they're all the same.
Hope you understand that Republicans have screwed the United States and the World more than all Wars put together! No wonder they've lied to get us into War.
I say it's time to repo liquidate the assets and pay ourselves back. What it's not worth anything. Well that sucks. Thanks Ohbama
More?
How much has countrywide paid back? I wonder Mr. Clinton, would you still encourage home ownership for those who couldn't afford it?
Country Wide does not exist.
Countrywide did not receive any TARP funds. $400 million (a small bailout in TARP terms) was given to Bank of America in order to strong arm them to take over Countrywide.
Clinton has escaped this fiasco unscathed. With the help of the media, He and his liberal cronies who cooked the books at Freddie and Fannie are in the clear. Even Barney Frank gets a free pass thanks to his party affiliation.
And it all began with Carter - the worst president in history until this present mess!
Oh please! The problems didn't happen just on Clinton's watch and both parties participated in the economic instability brought about by loosened regulations, pitiful oversight and buying into banking/investment BS. Banks went from being financial trustees to speculative risk takers. Saving was pushed aside for the more profitable "credit card " cash cow and consumers were encouraged to spend, spend, spend. Folks like the Enron crew became cronies to politicians and the people warning of the impending collapse were brushed aside.
Blaming past presidents is part of the larger problem which is that the blame isn't being placed on today's legislators to fix our financial system. The same politicians speaking out against TARP are also against further changes in laws that would make the kinds of things that brought about the disaster illegal.
So stop blaming Clinton/Bush/Obama and ask the legislators what they are going to do to fix the financial mess.
If you've read anything on the Great Recession you'll clearly see that Democrats are mostly responsible. Just the facts really.
Countrywide pursued homeowners, in fact paid realtors to steer homeowners to Countrywide. Countrywide didn't care if someone could afford a home or not; they just wanted to create the financial packages that they could make money from.
My realtor pressured me to take out a mortgage with Countrywide but I found my own deal fortunately because Countrywide was simply lying to people. Marzullo should have gone to jail.
I find it remarkable that anyone would absolve Countrwide of its criminal acts and point to its victims for all the blame instead. As I recall, Acorn worked hard to put out the word about predatory lending, but Republicans didn't like that.
Excellent post, SprDg. Once again, we're back to our "do NOTHING" Congress who work so hard to make sure they get their piece of the pie and once they do, don't care at all about the economic mess they created. I don't care who signed TARP - it was needed at the time - but I do care about what AIG is currently doing with "our" money . . .
I seriously wonder what "smaller" is . . . .
Acorn was standing right next to Countrywide, making sure that all loans would be passed or threaten descrimination law suites. All the banks could do was throw down their hands and give in. Bush tried to stop it and Clinton, Pelossi and the rest of the liberals made him out to be something he wasn't. Why do you think he stays out of politics now. Too many lieing, thieving, hating liberals.
Countrywide got bought out before it could go bankrupt just for your information. And I doubt Mr. Clinton ever encouraged people who could not afford homes to purchase them. But even if he had that actually has very little to do with Mortgage Backed Securities and Credit Default Swaps - two financial instruments created by Wall Street not Fannie or Freddie. Plus is it not the banking industries job to turn down loans on people who do not qualify - yet, at the height of the housing bubble banks were giving loans to individuals without verifying that these people had any income (the federal government never insisted that banks give loans without checking at least that the individual had an income.) Why, well because banks just sold those loans to Wall Street who bundled them into Mortgage Backed Securities and then counted on Standard and Poors to give these securities a Triple AAA rating so that they could be sold to unsuspecting investors. Further, the financial companies who sold the Mortgage Backed Securites then bet against the profitability of these securities by purchasing Credit Default Swaps. Very little of the financial mess created by Wall Street had anything to do with being forced to give out "bad" loans and everything to do with short term greed.
BARACUDA-2982648,
That was exactly the problem. It used to be the banking industry's job to verify an applicant qualifies for a loan. Now that the bubble burst, they are finally verifying it again.
Oh, the Conservatives spin on this is just so titillating! They blame Clinton for predatory lending taking place during Dubya's administration. Dubya was the one whose entire 2 terms was "'bout keepin' 'merica safe." Too bad Dubya and fellow Conservatives weren't interested in keeping the American people safe from bankers and Wall Streeters. If there was truly a problem from the Clintion administration then Dubya's administration, A.) failed to identify it, or B.) willfully failed to to act to protect this nation's economy. After all the Conservative have gone all out against Obamacare, where was this dedication to purpose when it was the housing bubble and the entire economy?
I think the most interesting aspect of the bailout is that 2/3 of the outstanding TARP money is in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. I have never seen a report about this. Could it be that it is because they are both darlings of the Democrats and the progressive agenda?
Democratic cronies Franklin Raines and James Johnson cooked the books at Freddie and Fannie for years. And they took millions in bonuses while they collapsed the housing industry.
facts are wasted on the ignorant.
The big banks would love to see Fannie & Freddie go bankrupt. All of the loans those two currently own would be for sale for pennies on the dollar. Since the big banks created many of the loans eventually bought by F&F, they know the real value of the loans.
Imagine this scenerio: I lend you $150,000 to buy your home. I sell your loan to Frannie Mae, a financial company for $155,000, representing the loan, plus a premium based on the quality of the loan. I continue to service the loan, getting a fee every month for collecting the payments. Fannie Mae goes bankrupt so I buy that loan from the bankruptcy court (along with a slew of others) for an average less than 10%. I then repackage that loan, with the others, and sell it again, for probably 80 or 90% of the original face loan amount. BTW, the original amount I loaned to you I borrowed at the current Fed funds rate of 0.25% and loaned to you at 4%, thus making 3.75% while I hold the loan.
The bottom line is that when a "too big to fail" bank does fail, no one really loses, the money is just shifted from one bank to another and the game goes on.
dirp,
The difficulty with your scenario is that many of those same loans are backed by the government. Not to mention that a major owner of the Fannie and Freddie is the Federal Government.
what about the United Auto Workers bailout from Obama?!? the Gov still owns plenty of GM. No end in sight there given their stock price.
Of the initial 50 billion loaned to the car companies 13 billion had already been approved by Bush. The 13 billion was with no strings attached. The remaining amount Obama approved required concessions by union workers in order to complete the bail out.
Taxpayers still own GM and Chrysler as well - why no mentionn of them? Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - the ones who arguably caused the financial meltdown - are still wholly owned by taxpayers. MSNBC has never run an arrticle on the mess they are in.
False Water. MSNBC has run many, many articles on Fannie Mae, as has every other media outlet.
Sorry, but you are sadly misinformed if you think Fannie and Freddie caused this mess. This mess was created by Wall Street financial institutions who invented Mortgage Backed Securities and Credit Default Swaps. Banks all over the country were under pressure to make loans so that Wall Street could buy them, bundle them up and sell them to investors as Mortgage Backed Securities - Fannie and Freddie did not invent these financial instruments they merely bought in to the game after Wall Street invented it. Further, financial companies were allowed to purchase Credit Default Swaps (this is what got AIG in trouble) in case they were unable to sell the securities to investors and those securities lost money. And best of all you could purchase a Credit Default Swap (insurance against a security lose) without owning any securities. This is like you purchasing insurance on your neighbor's house and then collecting if any thing happens to his property. All of these crazy financial instruments were made possible by Congress repealing Glass-Stegall. Yes, Clinton and Congress (controlled by Republicans at this point) are responsible for repealing Glass-Stegall under the rationale that the financial industry could police itself. What a joke. Fannie and Freddie are responsible for joining in the shenanigans but they did not start them nor are they any more or less responsible for this mess than Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Bank of America, etc. Glass-Stegall need to come back.
Congress encouraged lenders to loan to subprime home buyers but nothing passed by them forced lenders to accept no document loans or required them to come up with creative financing that would reset after a few years making payments higher than a borrowers income or to lend without requiring mortgage insurance when less than 20% down. If CEO's making 10's of millions a year couldn't figure out loaning 500K to a McDonalds worker claiming a 200K yearly income was a bad idea maybe they weren't worth the pay.
This story is very contradictory than others on this site and AIG news in itself. I have read where most all of this debt was paid (not true) and one story where AIG was suing the government to get interest back to a 1991 tax overpayment.
AIG is your posterchild for gothic corporate American greed with no brains. Make them pay it all back now that they are raping others adding billions in profits. And tell them to go screw themselves on the "interest" or we should audit them back to 1991 with no mercy or staute of limitations..........
Its a shame all that money waisted on bailouts and we in a lot worse shape now. No jobs no nothing but foreclosures and may have to foreclose on some banks that were bailed out. We really elected some smart politicians.
That whole TARP / stimulus scenario saved or created 21,000,000 jobs.
It was a huge success and one of the reasons that we are now out of the recession.
If that is truly what you believe....then you're a bigger idiot than most - Saved 21M jobs!!! you are deluding yourself - try telling that to the millions that still don't have a job, and while we're at it, why don't you explain the rationale used by the DUMBAMA administration to demonstrate how they arrived at the current 8.2% unemployment rate they report.
This statement is untrue. BOFA is laying of 30,000 alone with the other big banks following. Our unemployment numbers are only barely sustaining for now but it will go up with the current government policies and futility. This statement is political in speculation and not reality.
nothing new here
We are not out of the recession and the only movement the economy is making is backwards. Read the housing report and the unemployment numbers.
Michael, HeReigns and what happened: "SARCASM" Google it.
nothing new here: *chuckle*
dirp
Only nothing new for those who remain uninformed. A skill that Obama supporters excel at.
The bailouts had to be done but allowing the thieves and incompetents to go not only back to business as usual but actually make huge profits are where we went wrong. The actual bailouts cost doesn't even reflect the basically free money we gave banks and financial institutions by allowing them to borrow massive amounts at near 0% when they could turn around and buy treasuries paying 1.7% was a hidden gift that continues. Banks that today are making big profits and paying 10's of millions to their CEO's would be bankrupt and losing money with out our free money policy. That's wrong.
I believe you right we going out of the recession and into a depression if things dont change.
Joe66 the government won't let it go that far. They have too much to lose.
"The government" has no control over the current economy, except to the point where the Republicans are actively attempt to destroy the US economy to make the President look bad.
While Congress usually can't do much to make an economy better, what the GOP has done in the last 31/2 years have made things worse.
Well at least Obama, tried to do something and I a agree Carter was the worst of the worst for being a President, and remember Obama had to tried and save was GWB messed up and the Republicans also do under GWB watch. We don't need to play the blame game, but but lets put RESPONSIBILITY, where it belongs with RePUBs. this time I will not vote REPUB, I am going the DeM way. What they say about Bain is true. Try talking to people that was hurt by Romeny also Romney was a bully in school, he is a bully now. his wife refers to us as you people, in her mind we are the slaves and she is the massa
That whole "Romney's wife referred to us as you people" is an outright lie!!!! Find the video and you will see you're wrong!
Obama was a crackhead in school!
The Bain nonsense is also a lie! If he had broken the law, the SEC would have gone after him years ago!
mhrjhn: What, like the SEC went after Bernie Madoff, when people put complaints to them for FIVE YEARS, even laid everything out for them and they still did nothing ?
It doesn't take YEARS to appoint a new CEO, President, or Chairman. It might take a while to divest yourself of ownership, but all of the rest of Romney's "explanations" are pure, unadulterated BS.
If Mitt Romney wasn't in charge of Bain, even though he had the title of President, what is he going to do with the government of the United States ? Will he be President of the United States while his party destroys the world economy and gets involved in more wars, then "retroactively retire" from being the President ?
If we the taxpayers really own AIG then I vote we dissolve the whole thing and give all the executive staff really toxic recommendations in lieu of the prison time they should rightfully be serving right now.
sooooooooooooooo stupid. if "we" own it, then i recommend "we" make a $36 billion withdrawal, and NOW. f*ck them. or maybe bain should come in, cut "us" a check for 36 billion and break that sh*t up and sell it off.
i seriously try not to wish ill will on people, but when it comes to the "financial industry", there isn't enough bad sh*t that can happen to them as far as i'm concerned. nothing but a bunch of thieves...
Many government pensions are at AIG, there is too big to fail and then there is too connected to fail.
This whole mess has been going on for years. If you must blame a president look no further than Ronald Reagan. He started the whole thing by deregulation of most business'. His idea was if deregulated they would "police themselves." Bad move Ronnie!
tacky you're correct. Reagan lifted the trade restriction of foreign car manufacturer'se which started them flooding our markets. He bailed out the savings and loan which eventually failed and we lost billions. USA has been bailing out big business for a very long time. People don't understand that it took over 20 years for us to get into this predicament. There's no quick fix. Our government practices has finally caught up and the USA as we've know it is gone.
yes, we have not forgotton who voted for what. Pay back is a "*****".
Bottom line is that Bush was right, TARP was a necessity, as unpleasant as it was.
Right wing attitude of do-nothing was about the worst possible option.
Ahem, if I am part owner of AIG why have I never received either my shares in the company or any dividends? I get that from any other investment I've made...
OH come on MSNBC
Fire the moron who wrote this story. There's not a word about the recent lost of $20 billion that was reported. A lost that was the result of very risky investments they knew were risky.
And their not a word about AIG's law suit against the IRS AIG claims the IRS owes them for over payments.
How long is Obama going to let AIG stick it to the Taxpayers of this Country?
The TARP program, initiated by George Bush, was intended to prevent a collapse of the commerical credit industry. AIG was deeply involved because it wrote insurance policies for the investment banks' mortgage investments, a lot of which was way, way over-valued. Unpleasant but reality nonetheless.
The US took a bath. We know that. But there is no way for Obama to undo what has been done. AIG certainly doesn't have the money ot repay the US, otherwise I'm sure it would have been done by now.
Your comment "how long is Obama going to let AIG stick it..." is non-sensical. The money is long-gone.
I seem to remember a TARP II giveaway to the Banks of another $250 Billion Dollars --- for a total (TARP I & TARP II) of nearly $400,000,000,000. There were no restrictions on the banks for thhese funds. The Banks took all of that money and did an exceptional job of lending this Capital to small Businesses and companies to expand their businesses and stimulate the economy. The stimulus was a screaming success!
Why not try it again. Its time the taxpayers take another major hit! Oh, BTW , in talking with several Bank Presidents, I was told they were not lending any of this money... 'We are using this money to buy up the banks that will be taken over by the FDIC and fail over the next few years..." Since when is it the governments authority to 'bail out' private companies on a selective basis?
Most of the banks have repaid the TARP money. Almost 75% of the money in total has been repaid. Some of it never will.
TARP was designed to keep banks solvent, not provide them with capital to lend.
For those of you who are curious, following is a pretty explanitory link:
http://www.investorplace.com/2012/05/2008-tarp-funds-where-are-they-now/
Who do I contact to sell my shares of AIG, GM, Fannie and Freddie? I don't want them. I didn't want them in the first place.
T.A.R.P. was certainly not approved by me, so I want my money back.
Right, and I want my money back from the Iraq War. It sure wasn't approved my me, or by any democrat who was presented with reliable, accurate intelligence.
Bush spent over 1.5 trillion in stimulus spending and bailouts most going to banks and financial institutions while Obama's second bailout was for 787 billion which mostly went to states for projects designed to create jobs and prevent massive layoffs due to huge revenue losses for the states. Many want to pretend Obama had the heavy hand in bailouts but it was actually Bush.
Hey what happened to the poll that MSNBC was touting this morning that had President Obama leading Gov Romney by six points. Newsflash--F Todd came out and later and said the poll was junk and totally biased! If you get your news from NBC you are truly in the dark. Do you think Brian Williams will begin the Nightly News with a retraction of their lead story last night? Not likely! Most of the folks responsible for TARP are no longer in the Congress so I guess this is a moot point--except for the few Dems like Sherrod Brown from Ohio that voted for it....!
Without TARP, the unemployment now would be about 30 - 50%. It was like getting an antibiotic shot in the rear when you are sick. You don't really want the shot, but in the long run it makes you better. 'Let them all fail' sounds nice on paper, but in reality if all the banks and all the automotive companies had failed, we would all have failed.
Anyone who advocates 'end the IRS' 'end the EPA' 'End the FED' really don't know what they are talking about. It may sound nice at a Tea Party, but in reality, it's just nuts.
...and the taxpayers still own the part of Government Motors the Unions don't own. Was kind of hoping we would get to own some of the union steel and textile mills as well.
I want my dividend check!!!! Or at least a major discount on a new truck, LOL
Bo... ya gotta settle the national debt first, before there's a dividend possible. The difference between Corporate America and the American People is that we will pay our debts, and enjoy the interest/profit/dividends later. Corporate America is still "basking" in debt that it can't unload, due to its Corporate Greed, and excruciatingly short sightedness.
Money has to be kept in circulation, to generate a positive cash flow. They hoarded; by so doing, we became the Horde that was left holding their empty bag. We need to put our ND to rest; we need to regulate and monitor our economy. Finding the venues to make that happen becomes increasingly easier as those who swindled us are facing their own ugly music, and must dance to it, at our behest.
Sandy Weill of Citigroup seems to have realized that he can't bail out his bank via the FED, so he's asking for a return of Glass-Steagall; a regulatory environment that the "free enterprisers" eschewed, until they discovered that they no longer had any currency among us, and that their debt had spread out all over the world. (Hardly a "Corporate Takeover", unless your objective is to dump your debt on the unsuspecting, eagerly taking the short-term profit from manipulating present-value money, without regard to your own future).
I'm ready for a reinstitution of Glass-Steagall with a whole lot more teeth in our regulatory environment, and exponentially stiffer penalties for those who try to game the system. We've learned our lesson. They're just now getting the message....
“AIG has taken significant action since the crisis -- working with Treasury and the Federal Reserve -- to restructure, reduce risk, and streamline its operations to focus on its core insurance business,” Treasury spokesperson Matt Anderson said Wednesday." Well, that's a good start, but the whole insurance industry is still riddled with swindles and debt--"values" we shall not accept. This is the beginning of a new and different way of accounting for relevance in Life. It can never go back to the "business as usual" that Corporate Greed supplied. There's a demand that just can't meet.